Jim Miller on Politics

Pseudo-Random Thoughts

Not Just Presbyterians: The Presbyterian Publishing Company just published Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11,
another conspiracy theory book, this one arguing that the Bush administration faked the 9/11
attacks.

But it would be wrong to blame only the Presbyterians for this outrage. The author, David Ray
Griffin is a Methodist, in fact an ordained Methodist minister, if what I found with a quick web search
is correct. And the book has gotten endorsements from other leaders of the religious left.

The book is blurbed by the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, United Methodist theologian Catherine Keller
of Drew University, Episcopal theologian Carter Heyward of Episcopal Divinity School, and Roman Catholic
dissident feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether. Griffin explains that parts of the book
are based on lectures he delivered in June 2003 on behalf of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky.
The project in revisionist history seems to be ecumenical.

Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines
that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.
. . .
Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that
is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so
that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

So it obviously has not "cleared the neighborhood". There's a lesson for all of in this
decision. If you don't take out the trash, the neighbors won't respect you.

Now the discoverers of 2003 UB313 will get to name their
object, which will be classed with Pluto, and other dwarf planets. They favor
Xena,
which I rather like myself, maybe for the same reasons they do.

(After they realized just how small it is, many astronomers have thought that Pluto should never have
been included with the other eight planets. According to this
Wikipedia article, Pluto has just 18
percent of the mass of Earth's moon. Or to make the other obvious comparison, the smallest
remaining planet, Mercury, has more than 25 times the mass of Pluto.

And then there is this oddity. Astronomers had decided (wrongly) that the
orbits of Uranus and Neptune were being perturbed by a planet still farther out. And so Clyde
Tombaugh looked in the region where they expected "Planet X" to be and found Pluto.

Ironically, Pluto is far too small to have the effect on Neptune's orbit that initiated the search.
The discrepancies in Neptune's orbit observed by 19th century astronomers were due instead to an
inaccurate estimate of Neptune's mass. Tombaugh's discovery is therefore even more surprising,
given that Pluto's proximity to the region predicted by Pickering, Lowell and Ketakar was a coincidence.

Sometimes being lucky is just as good as being right.)

- 9:49 AM, 24 August 2006

More: Astrologers have their
own views on whether Pluto
should be classified as a planet. (And I must admit that I had not realized that the discovery of
Pluto led to the World War II.)

And, this demotion will ruin the traditional
mnemonics for the planets.
(Though I can't say that I have seen one for the planets as good as this astronomical
mnemonic: "Oh, be a fine girl, kiss me.")

The Instapundit Recklessly reveals a Republican
party secret. (It must be secret, at
least from the Democrats, or they would not concentrate their fire so heavily on George W.
Bush.) Karl Rove will have to pull Glenn's clearance, to prevent future slips.

Worth Reading: Many believe American conservatives are having more
children than American liberals. Arthur Brooks has some
plausible numbers in
support of that argument.

But the data on young Americans tell a different story. Simply put, liberals have a big baby
problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential
new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked
100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147
children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap"
of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the
same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats
to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining,
to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

The numbers look about right to me though, of course I would like to see his formal work before
endorsing them completely.

There is not much mystery about why there might be this difference between liberals and
conservatives. Liberals are much more likely to be feminists, who have, typically, denigrated
having children, or at least not valued it as much as those with traditional values. And liberals
are much more likely to be hard core environmentalists, and think that over population is a great
problem. So, in having fewer children, they are simply acting on their beliefs.

This is, by the way, a reversal of traditional patterns, at least as far as the parties go. For
thirty years after the Great Depression, Democratic families had more children than Republican families,
helping to preserve the Democratic majority that FDR created. During that time, Catholics and
blacks both had significantly higher fertility rates than white Protestants. And both groups were
heavily Democratic. (Catholics are now only slightly more Democratic than the population as a
whole, while blacks have become even more Democratic, though there are signs their party loyalty is
breaking down.)

Demography may not be destiny, in spite of
Auguste Comte, but demography is a good place
to start almost any poltical analysis.

DEBKAfile Is Almost Always Interesting, and sometimes correct, so you may want to
read their discussion of the Israeli failure (as
they see it) against Hezbollah.

None of the commanders at any level could explain what was going on because none were party to the
backroom decision-making at the prime minister's office. According to our sources, Olmert kept his
exchanges with Condoleezza close to his chest and members of his cabinet and high army command firmly out
of the process. The prime minister even kept the chief of staff out of the picture and did not
explain why he was called on to chop and change tactics in the heat of war.

Olmert's absolute compliance with Rice's directives without fully comprehending their military import
threw Israel's entire war campaign into disorder.

So the failure is the fault of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert — for following the orders of
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Chances of this being true? Very low, in my
opinion. And it would be interesting to know who is spreading this story.

Law Professor Ann Althouse shows that the decision by Judge Diggs Taylor to end
an NSA terrorist surveillance program was poorly argued.

This means that the judge has a constitutional duty, under the doctrine of standing, to respond only to
concretely injured plaintiffs who are suing the entity that caused their injury and for the purpose of
remedying that injury. We trust the judge to say what the law is because the judge "must of
necessity expound and interpret" in order to decide cases, as Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in
Marbury. But Judge Taylor breezed through two of the three elements of standing doctrine —
this constitutional limit on her power — in what looks like a headlong rush through a whole series
of difficult legal questions to get to an outcome in her heart she knew was right.

If the words of the written opinion reveal that the judge did not follow the discipline of the judicial
process, what sense does it make to take the judge's word about what the law means over the word of the
president? If the judge's own writing does not support a belief that the rule of law has substance
and depth, that law is something apart from political will, the significance of saying the president has
gone beyond the limits of the law evaporates.

Note that Professor Althouse is not arguing that the decision was wrong, just that it does not follow from
the judge's argument. That distinction was lost on some of the commenters at both
her site
and at the Volokh site. My favorite comment
was probably this one at Althouse's site, from one "Freder Frederson":

What sense does it make to take the judge's word about what the law means over the word of the
president?

The answer to that is that over the last five years the president has proven himself over and over to be
a liar, purposefully deceptive, seriously deluded, or completely ignorant on any number of issues,
including this one (remember when asked directly about wiretaps he said they required a warrant), so
the question should be why should we trust the word of the president about anything?

Bush derangement syndrome claims another victim. I'll leave the dissection of the logical and
factual errors in that last paragraph to you, if you are so inclined. (And, no, I have no idea
whether that is his real name.)

Kim Cramer and the members of her fantasy league are looking forward to an exciting season of marital
strife and bliss.

That's because the game in Cramer's league is relationships and the players are husbands.

Well, not real husbands. The name of Cramer's Web site -- fantasyhusbands.com -- makes that
clear.

More than 200 women have signed up to take the field of matrimony this fall, positioning fantasy guys
in various relationship scenarios and piling up points each week if their man handles the situations best.

A federal judge in Detroit agreed last week with American Civil Liberties Union lawyers that President
Bush exceeded his constitutional authority with warrantless monitoring of telephone and internet
traffic between Americans and suspected terrorists abroad.

Detroit? Why Detroit?

Simple. And common. The ACLU was judge-shopping, looking for a friendly (or unfriendly,
to Bush) jurist they could be almost certain would side with their view. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor,
a Carter appointee, obliged and ordered the Bush administration to immediately cease such
surveillance. The ruling will be appealed.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and
judicial abuse, announced today that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who last week ruled the government's
warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional, serves as a Secretary and Trustee for a foundation
that donated funds to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, a plaintiff in the case
ACLU et al. v. National Security Agency.

Sure looks like conflict of interest to me — but I have no idea whether it meets the legal
definition.

(There was much critical comment from the right about Judge Diggs Taylor being a Carter
appointee. Some thought this criticism unfair, but in fact, the judicial appointments made by
Jimmy Carter did include an exceptionally high proportion of scoundrels. And then there was the
memo that leaked near the end of his administration. They planned, as almost every administration
does, to use his re-election to clear out the deadwood — except, the memo noted casually, the women
and minority appointees.

One of the more infamous Carter judicial appointees was
Alcee Hastings, who was removed from office by
a Democratically controlled Congress, but then won a House seat in 1992, which he has held ever since.)

- 1:46 PM, 22 August 2006

More: Most citizens will find the
Lincoln precedents
instructive; most judges and law professors will find them appalling. Were Lincoln's actions
necessary to save the Union? He thought so. Scholars have argued over the question ever
since, so I won't try to settle the matter here. But I do wonder whether Judge Diggs Taylor
agrees with Lincoln.

- 2:58 PM, 22 August 2006

Still More: The New York Times finds this little conflict of interest
more than a little embarrassing,
especially since it was discovered by a "conservative group, Judicial Watch", Would it have been
less embarrassing if the conflict had been discovered by a leftist group, such as the New York
Times? I don't think that is what they mean; I think they mean that the judge should have
disclosed it herself.

After queuing for hours to mark her ballot paper in Congo's first multiparty elections for four
decades, Salome Ndavuma confesses she had a little dance.

"I just never thought the day would come," she says, beaming and breaking into another impromptu
jiggle.

The July 30 polls prompted celebration all over Congo, but the official recognition conferred by the
ballot box and photo registration card was particularly sweet for Pygmies like Ndavuma, 28, long used
to being ignored and vilified.

The Pygmies were often victims of the horrific Congo civil war, a war they had no part in
starting.

Elections are not perfect, but they do give some protection to those who have numbers, but no military
power. One can only hope that this proves to be true for the pygmies, who have been mistreated
for centuries.

Good news for drivers: Gasoline prices likely have peaked for the year as oil costs have backed off
record highs and the busy summer driving season comes to a close.

A number of analysts, including those at Moody's Economy .com, Wachovia and Global Insight, say gasoline
prices likely will continue to decline in coming weeks. But they warn that a number of factors
could toss out that forecast and send oil and gasoline prices higher.
. . .
The average U.S. price of a gallon of regular gasoline fell for the 11th consecutive day Monday, motor
club AAA and the Oil Price Information Service said. The average price was $2.929, 11 cents lower
than the recent peak on Aug. 8.

Osama Loves Whitney?!? I pass this bit of
gossip along, not because
I necessarily believe it, but because I find it amusing.

Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, was obsessed with the singer Whitney Houston and wanted to marry
her, a new book claims.

Kola Boof, a Sudanese poet and novelist, who says she was kept against her will as the terrorism
mastermind's mistress in 1996, writes in her autobiography that he wanted to give the star a mansion and
make her one of his wives.

And who knows? The story might be true.

(Here are some pictures, if
you are trying to remember what Houston looks like.)

August 22: Does Iranian President Ahmadinejad have a nasty surprise
planned for today? Here's the Bernard Lewis
column that raised that possibility.

In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at
the end of time--Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return
of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be
defined. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the
terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated
by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear
development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as "by the end of August," but Mr. Ahmadinejad's
statement was more precise.
. . .
It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22.
But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

There's a cheerful thought. I hope that we (and the Israelis) have taken precautions.

Although Lewis's column got the most attention for this suggestion that today might be unpleasant, the
bulk of the column makes a different argument, one that deserves serious attention, regardless of what
may or may not happen today. Briefly, Lewis argues that ordinary deterrence, even the threat of
nuclear war, may not affect the behavior of those currently running Iran.

Is he right? In the last week, Lewis probably forgot more about the Middle East than I will ever
know, but I am not sure he is right in this case. The bargaining advantage in pretending to
hold these beliefs is so large that we can not exclude the possibility that Ahmadinejad is conning
us.

Those my age might recall that President Nixon directed Henry Kissinger to hint to the
Soviets that Nixon was just a just a little unstable, that the Soviets should not be
provocative. Nixon did this because he understood that pretending to be a little crazy
would strengthen his bargaining position.

And we all understand this principle. We give more space to those people we think are
crazy — and some people pretend to be crazy in order to push other people around. So we can't
be sure that Ahmadinejad means what he has been saying. Short, of course, of having definitive
intelligence from his inner circle, something that seems quite unlikely.

(You can find two contrasting opinions on the Lewis piece
here and
here. Though I must say that the author of the
second, leftist Manan Ahmed, rather spoils his argument — at least for me — by citing
English professor and extremist Edward Said as an authority.)

- 9:42 AM, 22 August 2006

As you must have noticed, the world did not end
yesterday. Was Ahmadinejad just
playing mind games? Maybe.

When Even New York Times Editorial Writers start expressing scorn for
French President Jacques Chirac, I think we can conclude that he is in
trouble.

It would be tempting to laugh about France's paltry commitment of 200 additional peacekeepers for Lebanon,
if it weren't so dangerous. After insisting for years that they be treated like a superpower,
the French are behaving as if they have no responsibility for helping dig out of the Lebanon mess.

When the Security Council agreed earlier this month on a cease-fire resolution, scripted by the French
and the Americans, it was with the clear understanding that Paris would head the 15,000-member international
force and contribute a large number of troops. Now President Jacques Chirac's generals have cold
feet. Such a condition is highly contagious. And there are serious concerns about whether the
United Nations can field enough well-trained troops without the French to ensure that Israeli troops
withdraw completely and Hezbollah's attacks on Israel do not start again.

And deservedly in trouble.

(By the way, did you know that Chirac's approval ratings are much lower than Bush's? It's
true. And Chirac hasn't even tried to do anything significant.)

Edward Luttwak says that historians may disagree with the idea that
Hezbollah won in Lebanon.
He compares the latest conflict to the 1973 war, which was also thought, by some, to be an Israeli defeat.

The situation today, with the Lebanon war just ended, is the same [as in 1973]. Future historians
will no doubt see things much more clearly, but some gross misperceptions are perfectly obvious even
now. That even the heaviest and best protected of tanks are sometimes penetrated by the latest
anti-tank missiles should really not surprise anyone — they cannot be invulnerable, but still did
well enough in limiting Israeli casualties.
. . .
Many commentators repeated and endorsed Nasrallah's claim that his Hezbollah fighters fought much more
bravely than the regular soldiers of Arab states in previous wars with Israel.
. . .
Hezbollah certainly did not run away and did hold their ground, but their mediocrity is revealed by the
casualties they inflicted, which were very few. When an Israeli reconnaissance company attacked
the mountain town of Bint Jbail losing eight men in one night, that number was perceived in Israel and
broadcast around the world as a disastrous loss. Any Allied veteran of the second world war's
1943-1945 Italian campaign must have been amazed by this reaction.

And he has more in a similar vein.

Much is being made of the money Hezbollah is handing out for rebuilding. But, as Luttwak notes,
those doing the rebuilding may be less inclined to see their new buildings destroyed by another conflict
with Israel.

Worth Reading: David Perlmutter's column on what has gone wrong with photojournalism.

The Israeli-Hezbollah war has left many dead bodies, ruined towns, and wobbling politicians in its wake,
but the media historian of the future may also count as one more victim the profession of
photojournalism. In twenty years of researching and teaching about the art and trade and doing
photo-documentary work, I have never witnessed or heard of such a wave of attacks on the people who take
news pictures and on the basic premise that nonfiction news photo- and videography is possible.

I'm not sure, however, if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both.

Perhaps it would be more reassuring if the enemy at the gates was a familiar one—politicians, or maybe
radio talk show hosts. But the photojournalist standing on the crumbling ramparts of her once proud
citadel now sees the vandal army charging for the sack led by "zombietime," "The Jawa Report," "Powerline,"
"Little Green Footballs," "confederateyankee," and many others.

In each case, these bloggers have engaged in the kind of probing, contextual, fact-based (if occasionally
speculative) media criticism I have always asked of my students. And the results have been
devastating: news photos and video shown to be miscaptioned, radically altered, or staged (and worse,
re-staged) for the camera.

Worth reading, but incomplete, because it is entirely possible to deceive with true photographs — and
photo editors do it all the time. They choose, for example, a flattering picture of a candidate
they support, and an unflattering picture of a candidate they oppose.

Or they pretend that an unrepresentative picture is typical. The Seattle Times gave us a striking
example of that trick after the shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. They
illustrated their lead story on July 30th with a photograph showing two Muslim women going to a Jewish
temple to lay flowers. (Or at least two women they said were Muslims. One woman, whose face
is almost entirely covered, refused to give her name.) Above this was a giant headline: "Community
responds with sorrow, unity".

But if you read the story carefully, you learned that only a few of our local Muslims expressed sympathy,
and you could see that the Times made no effort to find any Muslims who had mixed or hostile feelings
toward Jews. And there are some here, as there are some almost everywhere.

Is this kind of manipulation deliberate? Often it is. And you can spot it, from time to
time, in nearly every "mainstream" publication.

And that is why it would not be enough if our "mainstream" news organizations stopped publishing
obviously faked photographs. (Not that they will, though they may be more cautious for a
while.) We need more honest photo editors, and I see no reason to expect them
any time soon. It really is a matter of integrity — and too many of our journalists simply
don't have it.

No Jury Duty After All: A few weeks ago, I received another summons for
jury duty, this one from the
Kirkland Municipal Court. The notice
was a bit cold for my tastes; after the official "you have been randomly selected" was a reminder that
intentionally failing to appear for jury duty is a crime. I would have preferred at least a brief
appeal to my public spirit before that warning.

At the end of the summons was a significant note. I was told to call the court, after five PM on
the day before the trial, for a recorded message, which might tell me that the case had been
settled — as it was. So they won't need me after all, at least for that trial.

(As far as I could tell, jurors at this court receive no compensation at all, not even bus fare or
mileage. All the more reason, I would say, to be more polite in the summons.)

How Do You Score A War? In baseball or in
cricket, the team that scores the most runs wins.
In basketball, the team that scores the most points wins. Even in
soccer, the team that scores the
most points wins, though the rules appear designed to produce as many scoreless ties as possible.

But what about war? How do we decide which side won in a war? Ordinarily, we look at what
each side had at the beginning and at the end of the war, and judge from that. Losers usually control
less of their own territory than they did at the start and have lost more in men and material than
winners — though there are, of course, exceptions to these rules.

By these rules, Israel defeated Hezbollah handily in the war that has been interrupted by a ceasefire.
Israel holds a part of Hezbollah's territory and lost fewer soldiers than Hezbollah did. I haven't
seen firm estimates, but it seems certain that Hezbollah lost a larger proportion of its weapons than
Israel did.

Nonetheless, the conventional wisdom is that Israel lost and that Hezbollah won, and that belief seems to
be held by most Israelis as well as by the terrorists and their supporters.

(There are some who disagree with the conventional wisdom, notably
President Bush.)

Is the conventional wisdom right? That depends on whether you think that perception is reality, or
more precisely, creates reality. By the usual way of judging who wins a war, Israel won.
(Though, if you will pardon me for this levity, Hezbollah may have beaten the point spread.) But,
if it is widely believed that Hezbollah won, then many will take different actions than they would have
otherwise. Israel's enemies will be emboldened, and so will ours. And so the media, by
spreading Hezbollah propaganda about their "victory", has made a new war even more likely.

Fifteen In A Row: As Seattle PI columnist Art Thiel says, this is a
mystery. The Oakland A's
have now beaten the Seattle Mariners 15 games in a row. And it is not because the teams are
unequal — when they play other teams.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that if the season series results were removed from each team's records,
the A's would be 53-51 and the Mariners 55-51. That suggests two teams, via comparison against all
other available competition in a sufficiently large sample, are about as evenly matched as could be hoped
for, short of converting them into nickels.

(The nickels are for coin flipping, if you are wondering.)

My guess is that this is just one of those funny streaks that shows up from time time, but it would be
interesting to hear the views of those who know more about baseball statistics than I do.

The ruling by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of United States District Court that the government's warrantless
wiretapping program is unconstitutional is out of line with the times.

Given a situation similar to 9/11, imagine that a hijacker on one plane is on the phone with a hijacker
on another plane. Law enforcement would need a warrant or an order from the attorney general to
tap their phones to find out where they're headed? The attacks on 9/11 took only about an
hour. Every second counts.

What's most absurd is that the president has the authority to order the Air Force to shoot down the
plane, but his critics argue that he doesn't have the authority to tap the phones on that same plane
without permission. I'm not a lawyer, but there's something wrong with this logic.

Josh Greenberger
Brooklyn, Aug. 18, 2006

And the letter that follows it, noting that the media make far too much of decisions by trial court
judges, isn't bad either. (The rest of the letters make predictable leftist arguments, so
predictable that I could have written every one of them myself, without much effort.)

Hurricanes require warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and last year the tropical Atlantic sea surface
temperatures were running well above normal. Global warming was the explanation given by most
'experts' the media interviewed. And since global warming will only get worse, those SSTs were
expected to just keep on increasing.

But now those same regions that had anomalously warm SSTs last year are -- gasp! -- near normal.

The cooling surprised climate modelers, but not the author, Roy Spencer.

This is not the only surprisingly cool SST story. A new scientific article now accepted for publication
in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the globally averaged upper ocean cooled dramatically between
2003 and 2005, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years!

The rapidity of this observed temperature change is beyond what computerized climate models can
explain. This is perplexing for modelers, who tend to believe that their models contain all of
the important physics of the problem.

Spencer thinks that the models are incomplete, specifically that they lack some of the feedback that
stabilizes the climate. His argument seems plausible to me, though I would like to see
the other side.

(As always, when I write about global climate change, I urge you to read my
disclaimer, if you have not already done so.)

A book suggesting the September 11 attacks were engineered by the U.S. government is raising hackles among
the faithful because its publisher is an agency of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest of several
Presbyterian denominations.

"Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action" is already in its second
printing after having sold 5,000 copies in its first month. It accuses the Bush administration -- in
power only eight months at the time of the 2001 terrorist attacks -- of plotting September 11 to justify
war with Afghanistan and Iraq, and to expand an "American empire."

In fact, it is disgusting to see a company belonging to a "mainstream" denomination spreading these
terrible accusations. It has been a while since I studied the Bible, but I seem to recall
something in there about not bearing false witness.

Naturally, the chairman of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, Kenneth Godshall, is making the usual
denials that the company agrees with the book, though he does say that the book deserves "careful
consideration". Right. No word yet on whether the company plans to follow this with a
book on how the devil has been misunderstood through the centuries. (The author, David Ray
Griffin, was best known before this book for his belief in something called "process theology", which
"denies the omnipotence and omniscience of God". Would that predispose him to sympathize with
the devil? It's hard to know these days.)

(This is still funny — and I must say that I prefer funny
Presbyterians to disgusting Presbyterians.)

Our Frivolous Leftists: Would you describe a would-be mass murderer as a
"creep"? Now he (and almost all would-be mass murderers are men) might be a creep, but that bit
of slang seems inadequate for someone who wishes to murder civilians by the hundreds.

But that's the word that linguist
Geoffrey Nunberg
chose in this op-ed, which criticizes "Islamic fascism" and similar terms. Better, he says, would
be to call these terrorists "Islamo-creeps". Nunberg is a "linguist at UC Berkeley's School of
Information", so we can assume that he did not choose Islamo-creeps" because because he did not know
what creep means. (According to my American Heritage dictionary, creep means "an annoyingly
unpleasant or repulsive person". A creep, in other words is someone you will ordinarily avoid, not
someone who will murder you.)

So why did Nunberg choose "creep" to describe our enemies? Because, I believe, he can not treat
this serious matter, seriously. He can be serious in discussing how to defeat the evil
Republicans, who mostly just want to win office in democratic elections, but not when discussing how to
describe radical Islamists, who want to murder him and destroy the United States.

Frankly, I find his unwillingness to be serious about our enemies just a little bit creepy. And
his attitude is all too common on the left, especially the academic left. They don't like
facing the facts about radical Islamists, so they deny the facts or downplay them with frivolity, as
Nunberg did in this op-ed.

(If you read all of Nunberg's op-ed, you will see that he actually agrees with
my argument that "fascist" could be applied to some of our
enemies, though not all.)

Just In Time For The November Elections? Crude oil prices are falling.

Oil fell for a fourth day on Thursday to the lowest in nearly eight weeks after U.S. data reminded
traders that crude stocks are relatively robust and the summer driving season is nearing its end.

U.S. light, sweet crude for September delivery fell 61 cents to $71.28 a barrel, its lowest since
June 26. London Brent was down 62 cents to $72.21 a barrel.

U.S. crude prices have shed more than 7 percent after falling for six of the last eight sessions as a
ceasefire took hold in the Middle East and BP (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) decided to shut in only
half of its 400,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Prudhoe Bay oilfield.
. . .
Crude stocks have fallen from the eight-year high reached earlier this year, but still remain higher
than almost any time since 1999, giving refiners a sizeable supply buffer to guard against any
unexpected disruptions.

Nothing unusual about this decline; we use more gasoline in the summer (and more heating oil in the
winter). Prices for gasoline typically rise in the spring and decline at the end of the
summer.

I have seen arguments that the current price of crude oil is partly due to speculation. I don't
have any opinion on that question, but can say that, if it is true, we might see a larger drop in price
than usual.

And if that were to happen before the November elections, Republican candidates wouldn't mind it one
bit.

Riley, 69, the former CEO of the University of Illinois Medical Center and a former law professor at
Loyola University, is running for a state senate seat in Milwaukee.

On Nov. 7, 2000, the day of the big election between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush,
Riley appeared at the polling place in Oconomowac, Wis., where he had registered to vote just the day
before, voting records show. His ex-wife owned a home there.

"Then he drove down to Chicago where he was already registered and he voted again," said Michael Crooks,
a Wisconsin attorney who filed a complaint against Riley with Wisconsin election officials. "This
is about as blatant as it gets."

In 2000, Al Gore defeated George Bush in Wisconsin by just 5,708 votes. I have believed, ever
since, that Gore's margin probably came from illegal votes. Wisconsin's election laws, especially
the one allowing same day registration, make vote fraud easy and every close election there suspect.

(Need a review on distributed vote? You can find some of my more important posts on the subject
here, here, and
here, and my disclaimer on the extent of distributed vote fraud
here.)